


no debt in the force

by Meskeet



Series: h/c bingo fills 2017 [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Blood Loss, Even Bleeding Out They're Snarky, F/M, Gen, Gen or Pre Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:56:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meskeet/pseuds/Meskeet
Summary: As they tend to do, a rescue mission goes awry. Poe is there to lend Rey a hand.





	no debt in the force

**Author's Note:**

> Another h/c bingo oneshot. I'm an equal opportunity whumper, so thought I'd have some injured Rey and worried Poe for this fic. References "not how the force works", but there's no other relation between the two fics.

There’s a lot of days where Rey wishes the Force had sent Poe and BB-8 to some planet other than Jakku. Sure, she would have missed out on quite a bit: BB-8, for one. Finn. The Force itself. Leia and Poe Dameron and flying out into space in a Starfighter and carefully, carefully levelling a Tie Fighter in her crosshairs and pulling the trigger.

So maybe Rey doesn’t _really_ wish she had never met the Resistance. Even in situations like this that seem to be a bit of an occupational hazard at this point – high on blood loss, the searing pain of a vibroblade slice in her back – it’s not _really_ the Resistance’s fault. It’s not even her fault, for all that she hadn’t realized that she was about to charge headlong into a trap that Luke would have said she should have seen coming but, _no Rey, you just had to launch a rescue mission and leave your backup behind, didn’t you?_

Honestly, she’d trade the constant threat of death and dismemberment away if she could, but it hadn’t taken the First Order long to realize she isn’t really all that willing to sacrifice her friends. Occupational hazard, she supposes. It’s one of those things that Jakku had never quite managed to burn out of her.

So, yes. Rescue mission gone wrong. Rey and two fighters had gone in for reconnaissance on the rumor that several of the former Resistance pilots who hadn’t been able to answer Leia’s summons had been kept there for a looming, very public execution. Although they have reinforcements waiting just a mile downhill, the lack of security left them feeling confident enough to start the hostage rescue before Poe’s own group arrived.

They – because even a Jedi happily takes backup when offered, _Rey_ – manage to free all but one before thing went sideways. The woman she’s freeing yanks Rey to the ground – which, coupled with the warning blazing through the Force as one of the fighters she’d brought with her dies – is just enough for Rey to whirl her saber behind her, slicing through the vibroblade and sending fragments flying through the air. It doesn’t quite stop the blow entirely: her attacker still has enough momentum to drive what’s attached to the hilt into her side, though she hears a grunt as the energy feedback likely burns their hand.

Still, being _stabbed_  is certainly something that even the old Jedi Masters would have struggled to shrug off, Rey thinks. Even though Rey’s certainly powered through quite a few wounds in the past, this one gives her pause. The wound doesn’t feel fatal – at least, everything of vital importance like her kidneys and her neck seem unaffected. She’s breathing fine, too. It’s just – Rey blacks out for a moment there and when she comes to, one of the Praetorian Guard is kneeling over her, turning over Rey’s lightsaber hilt in its – his, she thinks - hand. The Guard must have be the one who attempted to kill her: the metal of the gauntlet looks deformed from the breaking of the vibroblade.

“That’s mine,” she says, sluggishly, reaching out with her hand. The Force slips and slides under her grasp like an snake, thrashing about. It’s not her saber she manages to grasp, but the door instead.

The metal door rips off of its hinges, flying through the air towards the Guard in front of her. The Guard, not submersed in the Force like Rey takes the entire door to its back. There’s a _crack_ as the heavy metal collides with armor that reminds her vaguely of two ships colliding in midair.

The blaster shot misses her narrowly – she can feel the heat of it burn past one ear and she thinks that, if she hadn’t just almost taken out both the Guard and herself with the door, the assassin may have been able to dodge the next one as well. As it is, it splashes across his armor, followed by two more. Rey doesn’t move, just watches him collapse like all the strings holding him up have been cut and feels vaguely envious. She was going to take him out, really she was – but she wouldn’t say no to that bit of help. She can't help the sigh of relief, however, but the fading adrenaline just makes everything worse.

Every part of her body hurts, the muscles and the nerves and her bones. Rey reaches around, feels for the fragment of the vibroblade that had lodged into her back. Sure, the wound itself doesn’t feel fatal but she can feel her tunic sticking to her skin and can’t quite wrap her fingers around the hilt, grasp loose and sliding on the metal. No wonder the Sith use lightsabers, when Force knew there are enough  weapons out there without the effort of making a saber –  Finn hadn’t needed to deal with the whole ordeal of bleeding to death when Kylo nearly killed him, it just took a few hits to lay him flat. None of the drama of trying to keep the blood nicely in her body where it belongs, just unconsciousness and if they hadn’t gotten lucky, death.

Rey’s lightsaber falls to the ground with the Guard, rolling out of his fingers and hitting her boot like a puppy wanting attention. She leans forward to pick it up and falls to her knees instead, one hand going out to stop the rest of her from following. Honestly, though, she’s not sure it’s worth the effort.

“Rey,” Poe says, and she blinks up at him. Oh. That’s where the blaster shot had come from. “Leia will _kill_ me if anything happens to you. You aren’t allowed to die on me.”

She can hear more blasters – back-up, then, and the freed hostages fighting just as fiercely as the rest of the fresh Resistance troops around her, but the sounds are too faint for her to really care. “Nothing’s ‘appening to me,” Rey says, spitting out a bit of blood in the middle. “S’not going to be your fault anyway, unless you want to blame BB-8 for finding me.”

Death around them fills the facility around them, blooming from individual moments like stones dropped into water, the pause between lightning and thunder. She just hopes it's the Stormtroopers and not their Resistance fighters. Around her, the Force stays fragmented – either the weapon had been coated in something or pain is making everything the type of off-kilter that feels as though she’s been startled in the middle of a dream.

Poe doesn’t say anything at first and Rey looks at him. Really looks at him, and considering she’s the one with an Old Republic weapon sticking out of her back, it’s impressive that it crosses her mind that he looks absolutely terrible. He shakes his head, once, and despite – or perhaps because of – the general state Rey’s in, she can feel the gentleness of his hand gripping her shoulder. He pulls her back up to her knees, crouching in front of her.

Rey tries to focus on his face because it feels important, watching the muscle work along his jaw and the smear of blood across his cheek and the way Poe Dameron tries to smile.

“Hey,” Poe says, as though repeating it will make it true. “You aren’t allowed to die on me. Not until I pay you back for rescuing me that last time. And the time before that. And – well, you know where I’m going with this.”

He sounds so sure that Rey wonders if the Force listens to him in a way it doesn’t to her. She tries to help Poe pull her up to her feet, but it’s nice of him not to point out that she’s probably making things more difficult. Rey lets her head loll sideways, breathes in the smell of leather and sweat. It’s surprisingly nice. Almost nicer than bacta, really.

“Rey-” Poe’s voice rises a little bit in a way Rey’s used to hearing when it comes to other people, but not her. Then he’s dragging her, feet digging into the dirt to keep them going forward. “Commander Dameron bringing in one, we’ll need a bacta tank ready.”

Then, either because he’s going crazy, because _Rey’s_ going crazy, or because he’s talking to someone she really can’t hear, Poe adds. “Unless they’re in immediate danger, I’m bringing in a high priority with what looks like vibroblade wounds to the back. Get the tank ready.”

“Broke it before they hit me,” Rey says, obligated to defend herself.

“Yeah, I can see that, considering you still are in one piece.” She sees his throat flex as he swallows. Rey tries really, really hard not to throw up on him as he picks up speed. Light swims around her – the suns overhead, perhaps? Or maybe someone finally turned on the lights. “Sorry, just- I don’t want to explain this to the General. Or Finn. Would you really want me to put Finn through this? The guy has like, five friends.”

Rey’s pretty sure Finn has more friends than her at this point, but since one of hers is BB-8 she really can't complain.

“Oh Force,” Poe says. “Yeah, you _really_ have to be okay because no one would be able to stop BB-8 on the darkside and at that point, I’d deserve whatever my buddy wants to do to me.”

Rey squints. Poe tilts a bit more. The lights are going away, fading out around the edges and letting colors bleed into each other. She laughs a little bit and regrets it, because it hurts and Poe doesn’t laugh with her.

“Isn’t that a joke?” Rey asks.

“Of course it was.” Poe says, but even when Rey didn’t have the Force she had to be able to survive. In Jakku, the desert was easy. It was the people she had to know how to figure out. And – Poe’s face is pale, for all that he hasn’t taken a single wound today.

“You didn’t really owe me anything, anyway,” Rey says, or at least she thinks she does. The lines between speaking and thinking are fuzzy, although if Poe’s even remotely Force-sensitive he can probably hear everything anyway. If nothing else, the pain is broadcasting on all frequencies.

“What?” and he honestly seems confused, stumbling a little. Or maybe that’s because his boots are thudding on metal and not grass now.

Someone starts to pull her away and Rey clings onto Poe. He says something over her head and the hands stop tugging at her.

“You said I couldn’t die as long as you owed me,” Rey says, trying to make words clear. Trying to make sure each word stays distinct. “But that’s what friends do, right? Look after each other? You never owed me anything. I'm glad you found Jakku.”

Poe _does_ laugh, as though she was the one joking. Everything tilts a little bit as he lifts her, laying her flat. Rey breathes in the sweet, sweet pure oxygen of the mask placed over her face.  “You may be right, but you still aren’t allowed to die, you know. Not with the First Order left to fight.”

And then, because this is _important_ she tries to reach out with the Force. This, at least, comes easily. _Not going to die,_ she promises. _Get in trouble without me._

Poe grins, bright and shining and she can almost taste the leather of his jacket again. “You know how many interrogation chambers they have? I bet I haven’t seen half of them yet, so you better stick around.”

Rey smiles. Jakku has never felt so far away. This time, she doesn’t think she quite manages to grasp the Force, as the warmth of what she thinks is a sedative is slowly stealing through her body. Still, she thinks he’ll get the message.

_Count on it, Dameron._

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas? xD comments are far superior to anything Santa's elves could make!


End file.
